Hard-hitting Eddie Wineland promising continued aggression at UFC 155

It’s coming up on two years since Eddie Wineland lost a fight that could have been a career-changer.

Wineland (19-8-1 MMA, 1-2 UFC), a former WEC bantamweight champion, went on a four-fight run to close out his career in that promotion. When the WEC merged with the UFC, Wineland got a co-main event fight at UFC 128 against Urijah Faber. He lost a unanimous decision, but a couple more takedown stuffs might have turned into him having his hand raised – and a title shot against champion Dominick Cruz.

Instead, Faber went on to get that shot and Wineland went back to the drawing board – but not after beating himself up a little.

“It’s a woulda-shoulda-coulda thing,” Wineland told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). “I was down on myself the whole flight home. You get to thinking about it, and it’s simple little mistakes. Then you think, ‘Hey, I just went three rounds with the best in the world, and he only beat me by one point.’ You take it and learn from it and grow from it and get better from it. That’s exactly what I’ve done.”

The learning process may not have happened overnight from that loss, though. His next outing, he dropped a unanimous decision to Faber teammate Joseph Benavidez. And unlike the Faber fight, in which he won the first round, he wasn’t able to get much going against Benavidez and fell to 0-2 in the UFC.

But rather than taking an easy fight to get his first UFC win out of the way and start building back up, Wineland booked a fight with former title challenger Scott Jorgensen. Again, he was the underdog, and who knows what may have become of him with a loss, given that three straight is a common kiss of death in the UFC.

Jorgensen found out, though, that Wineland had no intentions of that.

“I have a better outlook,” he said. “I think the way I fight is totally different now (than the two losses). I went back to my old style of pushing the pace and getting in the trenches and going to war.”

His knockout of Jorgensen at UFC on FX 3 took just one punch. And it came after Jorgensen had bloodied him up with what UFC President Dana White said after the fight was one of the biggest cuts he’d ever seen. Furthermore, Jorgensen had never been stopped.

On Saturday, Wineland meets Brad Pickett (22-6 MMA, 2-1 UFC) in the final bout on the preliminary card at UFC 155, which takes place at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. Their fight airs on FX ahead of the main-card pay-per-view.

And Wineland believes that much the same as Jorgensen experienced, Pickett will find out quickly just how hard he hits.

“I think he’s going to taste my power and want to take me down,” Wineland said. “I’ve watched some of his fights, and he’s not afraid to stand and trade. He’ll stand in the pocket and take a punch, and he stays right in place and stands and swings. But he also likes to shoot for the takedown, and when he gets in real trouble, he’ll go for that takedown.

“I think I’m going to punch him a couple of times and he’s not going to like it.”

Pickett hasn’t been knocked out in nearly eight years. Wineland is reminded that before the Jorgensen fight, he also predicted he’d bring the type of power that would lead to a knockout – despite his opponent never being stopped – and that the confidence, at the time, seemed a little far-fetched.

“Was I lying? Was I lying?” Wineland asked. “I punched him real good, he wanted to take me down, he couldn’t do it and I knocked him out.”

Wineland’s path to what he hopes is another knockout and a surge up the UFC bantamweight charts may not be based on a backyard brawl, though.

If it goes in that direction, he believes he can deal. But despite what Pickett calls “controlled chaos” as his fighting style, Wineland believes he can keep things in his wheelhouse by not being lured into a brawl.

“If I keep things technical, I think it’s in my favor,” he said. “Brawling’s in my favor, as well, because I have a good chin and I’ve got a hard punch. I like to keep it technical because if I do, it means I’m probably going to get hurt less. That being said, me being hurt doesn’t bother me. You keep going.”

A win would give him two straight, but two straight over Top 10 bantamweights. And with the 135-pound division a little messy right now thanks to injuries and only a few solid win streaks, a win could have Wineland staring down the barrel of another title shot – a shot that eluded him with the Faber loss.

Like most fighters, Wineland will fall back on the old adage of “Whoever the UFC wants me to fight next.” But he knows if he keeps doing what he did against Jorgensen, the path to a title shot might come sooner rather than later.

“I’d like to have the title,” he said. “If I really start putting together a lot of wins, which is where I’m headed now – if I keep winning, they’re going to have to give me a title shot. It’s inevitable. I keep winning, they can’t deny me a title shot.”